Never Without Feeling
by Lady StarFlower
Summary: "The magic in our kingdom relies on feeling and h-heart, not witchery." "Nohrian magic is far from emotionless." He replies frostily. Leo/Sakura. Written for Leo's birthday. Conquest Route (I made a mistake and labeled it Birthright in the work). Deviation from Burnt Branches.


**A/N: Written for Leo's birthday, which happens to be mine as well. This turned out a lot longer than I had expected, but hopefully you'll still enjoy it! This is kind of a deviation from "Burnt Branches", so while they are similar, they have a different ending. Birthright Route is the context for this work.**

 **Enjoy!**

She didn't really remember her brothers' funeral.

Her presence was required; Sakura stood at her sister's side. Hinoka had that strained, white look on her face, the kind she wore when nosy ambassadors or foreign noblewomen came to poke around the remains of the magnificent kingdom called Hoshido.

"I feel tight." Hinoka said dully when Sakura accosted her. "I'm…I'm like an overused bowstring that's fraying at the ends."

Sakura knew that feeling. It was that feeling she got in her gut when she burst into the ruined throne room to see her powerful, invincible older brother lying prone on the bloodied floor, a crackling sword in his stomach.

It was enough to make her want to throw up.

The funeral passed like a mirage to Sakura. Images, dimly perceived through a veil of unshed tears, flashed by: her brothers' faces lying cold and still on the oil-drenched logs. Ryoma's pained visage, Takumi's still and calm. The uncertain flames, licking reluctantly at their bodies, hesitant despite the ample supplies of kindling.

She remembered the grieving Hoshidans, in robes of white and grey, holding flowers of death. She remembered Hinoka standing stiff and cold, like a stone statue carved from the proud mountains and painted in gaudy colors to be placed in a museum of glass and silk for an eternity.

And as for herself? She felt like a sakura tree struck by lightning: trunk and heart split clean down to the roots, bone-white petals evaporated in the blast.

But everyone else felt the same way. After all, that's what happen when you're on the losing side of a war.

O.O

Nohr waited three months.

Then they sent messengers, men wearing sable and gold and expressions of haughty pride, bearing elegantly-worded salutations that essentially meant, "As soon as you finish mourning the men we slaughtered, we can get to the business of divvying up the land to your disadvantage."

Hinoka nearly put a lance through the fourth messenger's head, her eyes on fire and her expression seething. "You may inform your king," she spat, "that we have the right to forego negotiations until we are in a stable position to conduct business."

The messenger, a cold-eyed silver haired young lady, smiled calmly, and bowed her head in a mockingly deferent gesture. "But oh queen, our own esteemed king Xander is sending someone quite important in just a fortnight. His younger brother, Prince Leo, will be coming to conduct ambassadorial duties with you personally."

Hinoka dropped the lance. It clattered on the metallic floor of her dais. Dead silence filled the room. Sakura stared at her ashen-faced sister.

The messenger bowed again, a hint of triumph in her steely gaze as she lifts her eyes upwards. "And you, my lady, surely can't turn him away?"

It was a threat. It was a challenge.

And the Queen of Hoshido cannot back down from either.

 _Arrival_

Prince Leo's entourage arrives perfectly on time.

They are wearing their kingdom's colors; deep ebony and light yellow gold. The Hoshidans hiss as they ride by, the hatred tangible in the very air. Half of Sakura wants to chide them for their behavior, and the other half wishes silently to join in.

She feels like a failure.

Hinoka sits upon her throne as if it's made of lit coals. Her retainers' usual airiness is replaced with cold, sharp impassivity. The witnessing daimyo seethe like writhing snakes as Prince Leo walks into the throne room. The whole atmosphere is a hostile, unforgiving abyss.

He pauses infinitesimally. Prince Leo's golden eyes flicker briefly, a fleeting look of guarded wariness passing over his face. But he steps forward nonetheless, and places a fist over his stomach and another behind his back.

He bows.

"Welcome to Castle Shirasagi, Prince Leo." Hinoka says in a voice made of ash.

O.O

"That boy is a brash one."

Subaki lunges with his lance, the point of the weapon sweeping forward in a perfect and deadly arch. "Imagine," he continues, bringing the tip back parallel to his forehead, "entering a defeated kingdom's heart simply to banter politics. I'm amazed at his audacity."

"Hmm." Hana replies, blowing vigorously on her blistered palms. "Maybe he's just plain stupid."

"A prince of Nohr is not stupid." Subaki says darkly, lashing forward with his lance again. "They are cruel, haughty and cunning, and take every advantage they have to undermine those they defeat. It's a dangerous kingdom we're serving under, Hana my dear, and their prince is in our very castle."

"Are you suggesting that Sakura is in danger?" Hana is paying attention now, glancing up with a flame in her beautiful eyes. "He won't dare harming her in our own palace."

"Best be on our guard." Subaki plunges the lance into the earth, his normally serene face cold. "Those infidels are craven enough to try anything."

Sakura closes the shutters of her room with a sickening feeling.

O.O

After a few days, the hostile nature of his stay begins to take a toll on the Nohrian prince.

Most of the daytime hours he spends with Hinoka in endless treatise meetings. By the time they emerge, each royal is worn and grumpy, their retainers trailing after them with a jumble of scrolls and books in their arms looking equally frustrated. Sakura watches as the prince heads straight for his rooms, snapping to his retainers to quicken their steps.

"He proposes the most absurd ideas." Hinoka rants over dinner with Sakura. Her chopsticks click impatiently on her plates as she half-eats, half-talks in a manner most unroyal. "I swear to Dawn Dragon, he and King Xander are trying to halve our total territorial might. Simply because they don't produce as much agricultural resources as we do…."

Sakura listens quietly, eating without tasting anything, and all she can conjure up in her mind was the utter defeat in Leo's face, the strain, that same look of an overused bowstring…

 _Fraying at the ends_ ….

The next morning, she approaches the prince of Nohr and offers to show him the castle grounds.

O.O

They talk magic.

"Hoshidan sorcery seems more artful than our Nohrian spells." Leo comments as she waves her Sun Festal gently over a blade wound in a guard's arm, the muscles knitting themselves together like cloth. "Tomes and staves in our kingdom are more rigidly defined, like numbers and equations."

"I w-wouldn't call it sorcery." Sakura replies, deftly bandaging the man's arm and thanking him for the demonstration. "The magic in our kingdom relies on feeling and h-heart, not witchery."

"So do ours." Leo says with a hint of defensiveness, watching the guard salute his lady, casting a suspicious look at the prince as he leaves. "But my tutor once told me that relying too heavily on one's inward feelings can eventually wreak havoc when on the tumultuous battlefield."

"True, but that feeling can be channeled to great lengths." Sakura answers, starting to realize that this conversation was leading somewhere dangerous. "After all," she adds with some spite, "an e-emotionless mage is a useless one, is he not?"

"Nohrian magic is far from emotionless." Leo's voice turns several degrees frostier, and for a moment he perfectly embodies the cold, unforgiving nation that holds her own weaker kingdom by the neck. "It seems you do not realize that we have suffered just as much as you did in the war. Just because we emerged triumphant does not mean we are unscathed, princess. We have losses just as mourned as you-" He stops.

Sakura, momentarily aghast, turns livid. The words pour out of her mouth before she can stop them. "You dare speak to me about losses?!" Her voice turns shrill, and she can hear her retainers hurrying out of the darkness to be at her side.

"All your siblings are alive and well, cozily ruling the nation from an intact capital. Corrin is living happily with you, after betraying all that Mother and my kingdom had to offer him. You and your heartless kingdom destroyed my beautiful, beautiful home, and you come in here lecturing me about your own _losses_?!"

Leo stares at her, his golden eyes wide. One of his retainers, the eyeless archer, snarls at her. "Do not raise your voice to the prince of Nohr."

"Our lady can do whatever she wishes to in her own home." Subaki replies in a voice of steel. Hana's hands are on her shoulders, and the young woman whispers in her ear, "Come on, Sakura. Go inside. You're shaking like a leaf."

She steers Sakura towards the doors, and the princess obliges wearily, the rush of adrenaline leaving her as quickly as it came. As she goes inside the palace, she turns once, back outside, and sees Leo still watching her, face open like the sky.

His expression is one of genuine realization and sorrow.

O.O

In the morning, a letter written in a masculine hand arrives at her doorstep, a small seal of black embossed on the folds.

 _Princess Sakura,_

 _I would like to apologize for my callousness in the garden. I had not realized yet the emotional pain my kingdom had put you through, and would like to beg your forgiveness for my actions. I hope that we may remain, in some way, friends?_

 _Leo_

Sakura stares at the missive for a good half-hour before she begins to write. It's a short letter, but she believes that Leo would understand the depth of the words she penned.

 _Prince Leo_

 _I forgive you._

 _And I'm sorry too._

 _Sakura_

O.O

They find him in the library.

Two of them, sons of ruling lords who were murdered by pillaging Nohrian soldiers, eager to enact vengeance for the unfair deaths of their fathers. A ninja and a diviner, both strong, both furious. It's a deadly combination.

They nearly kill him.

O.O

She bursts into the infirmary, clutching her Sun Festal to her chest. Leo writhes on the medical cot, pained groans escaping his bloodless lips. His retainers pace at his bedside, frustration and distress on every feature. Two healers are chanting words of mending over him, reluctance filling every syllable, every intonation.

 _The magic in our kingdom relies on feelings and heart._ They are accomplishing absolutely nothing.

"Leave at once." Sakura's voice is much stronger than she thought possible, and the two women glance up in shock. "But, my lady-!"

"Go!"

They scurry away.

"Listen, girl-" The one-eyed archer begins, but she ignores him.

"Please hold him down." She instructs, folding up her sleeves. The man starts, but his sandy-haired colleague obliges instantly, throwing a curt word at him to follow suit NOW. The archer does.

Sakura unravels the clumsily-applied bandages off of Leo's abdomen, shuddering internally as her fingers come away sticky with blood. The wound is nearly a hand's breadth long, and the magical damage from the diviner discourages blood clotting. It's a miracle he hasn't bled to death yet.

Leo lets out a particularly pained cry as her fingers touch the wound, and the archer snaps, "What are you doing? You're making it worse!"

"Shut up, Niles." The other retainer retorts. "She knows what she's doing."

Sakura feathers her hands over the ridges of Leo's abdomen, feeling for the angry pulse of divining magic. There. Right at the pit of his stomach. She reaches for her Sun Festal and holds it above him.

Magic wounds are tricky to work with. Usually they are bloodless hurts, but they require painful extraction from a skilled mage. However, this was a flesh wound combined with an ensorcelled one.

When she heals him, it's going to be excruciating.

"Make sure he stays still." She instructs his retainers, and they both nod in assent. Her Sun Festal begins to glow. Sakura closes her eyes and starts chanting.

Leo begins to scream.

O.O

It takes her three hours to rid Leo's body fully of the magic, and then one more to close the wound.

At the end of the process, both Niles and Odin (she learned their names during the whole ordeal) slump to the ground, exhausted from constantly holding down their thrashing liege. She asks them to take some rest, and they acquiesce, going to the far end of the infirmary to take a well-deserved nap.

Leo is sleeping, his whole countenance much more at peace. He does not appear young in his slumber, as he still retains his maturity, but is rather less brittle, less cold, than the hard-hearted prince of Nohr everyone makes him out to be.

Sakura touches his forehead, telling herself that it's for the sake of checking his temperature, and finds it gently warm. She can't decide whether to laugh or weep.

She settles for both.

O.O

Two days later, he opens his eyes.

Groggy and golden, they gaze into her own crimson orbs, and a small, wry, smile spreads over his cracked lips.

"Indeed," he whispers hoarsely, "heart and feeling, is it not, princess?"

She smiles in return and squeezes his hand.

"Please." Her voice is quiet. "Call me Sakura."


End file.
